An Interview with Willie Tyler and Lester - Part One

Kliph Nesteroff: You and your dummy Lester used to perform at a Detroit club called the Brass Rail.

Willie Tyler: Right, it was a strip club. Back in those days, a strip club wasn't like they are today with the poles and things like that. When I wasn't working on the road I would work local venues and one would be the Brass Rail, downtown Detroit. They had a trio that played for the strippers. Because of the union rules, the trio had to take three thirty-minute breaks each night.

So when they took their break, a comic would fill in that slot. The comedian would go up and do time. So, the stripper leaves the stage and the trio leaves the stage, and now you're up there doing stand-up, or in my case doing my [ventriloquist] act with Lester. The last thing a guy at a strip club wants to see is a comic, but it was just one of those gigs and you had to do it.

I'll tell you how conservative strip clubs were back then. In those days, when you were onstage in a strip club you were not allowed to use four-letter words. You could not be crude. It wasn't exactly against the law, but you would definitely be fired from your gig. It was a situation where you could only imply stuff. But I got a lot of practice, a lot of experience, working venues like that. 

Kliph Nesteroff: You were working these strip clubs shortly before you were signed to Motown Records...

Willie Tyler: Actually I was already with Motown in Detroit, but when I wasn't on the road I was around town picking up local gigs and the Brass Rail would be one of them. It was an interesting kind of a situation. Any comedian that worked a place like that would be local. They wouldn't be people that anyone would know - just local people working downtown. 

Kliph Nesteroff: How did you get signed to Motown?

Willie Tyler: I had gotten out of the Air Force and went back to Detroit. I did four years in the Air Force with special services. That was my job. Performing. There was a summer resort community called Idlewild, Michigan. I got a job in the summer working with a revue there. It was a resort, but it was a Black resort. Black performers would work there. 

People like Lloyd Price of Stagger Lee fame. I worked there for the whole summer. They had a full band and that band was all the Funk Brothers. The Funk Brothers were from Motown; Benny Benjamin, James Jamerson, Earl Van Dyke. They were all working up there. The Gordy family would come up there for the summer and that's where they saw me. Someone was talking to Berry Gordy when they returned to Detroit about the ventriloquist they had seen. 

They contacted me and I went over. Motown in those days had their meetings every Wednesday. They had me come in on Wednesday and do about five minutes with Lester. I did that, left, and by the time I got home there was a call: "Welcome to the Motown family." I signed with Motown and I was with them for eight years. I worked as their emcee and I traveled the road with the Motortown Revue. 

We did one-nighters all over the place and we would play the Apollo Theater in New York, the Uptown Theater in Philadelphia and the Fox Theater in Detroit. We were always playing the Fox Theater at Christmas because Berry wanted everyone to be home in Detroit for Christmas. We'd work it every year for the two weeks around Christmas and New Year's.

Kliph Nesteroff: You were on the bill at the Apollo Theater, February 1965, as part of Jocko and His Rocket Ship Show.

Willie Tyler: Jocko was a New York deejay. They often had popular New York deejays emceeing the shows there. Nine out of ten times we didn't do our own emcee work at the Apollo. They always had a deejay who had been publicizing the Motortown Revue on their radio show and they'd emcee it in the evening.

Kliph Nesteroff: The line-up for that engagement was Willie Tyler and Lester, Marvin Gaye, Sheila Ferguson and The Three Degrees, the Reuben Phillips band...

Willie Tyler: Yeah, the Reuben Phillips Orchestra. That's it. I have a photo of the Fox Theater with everybody's name on the marquee for one of the Motortown Revues, everyone's name is on it including Lester and I. Even though our name took more letters and more space than anyone else, Motown was very kind to allow our names on the marquee. It took up most of the space!

Kliph Nesteroff: Where would you you be placed in the line-up on a show like that?

Willie Tyler: It depended on whether there was a deejay. If there was a deejay hosting then I would be some place in the middle. If they didn't have a deejay then I was on in between each act. I was the emcee.

Kliph Nesteroff: Oh, wow, you were actually the host of the Motortown Revue?

Willie Tyler: Yes, that right. You know, have you ever watched the television show Showtime at the Apollo? They have amateurs come out and the audience will boo their disapproval. Well, those are the kinds of audiences we had at the Apollo back then as well. We were doing six shows a day at the Apollo. If it was a holiday like Thanksgiving weekend or something then the shows were back to back to back. Back to back shows.

Sometimes if it was slower during the week people in the audience would stay over. They could stay and watch the next show. With songs it's different, but if you came out doing comedy - then they already knew your punchline. You had to change your stuff. You'd have to play games with the audience because otherwise you have them messing with your set and yelling out your punchlines. So I learned a lot working those particular situations.

Kliph Nesteroff: I imagine that these gigs must have been more difficult for you compared to the other acts.

Willie Tyler: Well, no, not at the Apollo. When you worked the Apollo, even the acts that had hit records were apprehensive. It was a rough audience. Smokey Robinson has mentioned this many times. He said that when he first worked the Apollo... he did the first show and then the manager of the Apollo phoned Motown. They had a deposit down of some kind. They were paying Motown, but he phoned and told them after Smokey performed that they wanted their money back.

The Miracles weren't going over. The audience treated Smokey poorly with heckling and shouting and yelling during the songs. So it was rough. It was kind of rough. I was working there one time with a singer - I can't remember his name - but he was from Detroit. He had a regional hit record in the Northeast - New York, Detroit and Chicago.

So we're at the Apollo and I was emceeing this particular show. I introduced him and he went out and sang this hit song. As part of his act, he had a handkerchief in his lapel pocket which he'd pull out and walk to the edge of the stage. Women would run up to the edge of the stage with their arms out and he would toss the handkerchief and the ladies in the audience would fight over it. Now fast forward six months.

We're both working the Apollo again. He's introduced, he sings the song that was a hit six months earlier, pulls the handkerchief out and goes to the edge of the stage and tosses the handkerchief. This time - they're not fighting over it. They take the handkerchief and throw it at him. It was that kind of a crowd. Baptism by fire. But if you made it at the Apollo - you could make it anywhere.

Kliph Nesteroff: I have an advertisement from June 1965. A Motown tour of one-nighters all across the South: Raleigh, Greensboro, Greenville, Charlotte, Louisville, St. Louis, Nashville, Chatanooga, Augusta, Montgomery, Knoxville, Mobile and New Orleans. All of that in twelve days.

Willie Tyler: Yeah, all the villes are in there (laughs). Greenville, Knoxville, Nashville, Louisville (laughs). Yeah, those were one-nighters and we'd all travel in the bus. Everyone was on the bus except the Four Tops. The Four Tops had their own station wagon so they were independent. The four of them and their valet. They would already be at the gig by the time the rest of us arrived on the bus.

Kliph Nesteroff: The line-up for this tour - Marvin Gaye, Martha and the Vandellas, Junior Walker and the All-Stars, Brenda Holloway, the Contours, Willie Tyler and Lester.

Willie Tyler: Mmm hmm and this was the type of tour in which I was the emcee. Lester and I would host the shows and do all the emcee work. These shows were sort of self-contained, the traveling Motortown Revue. I guess people still tour like that, but I don't think the venues are as far away now as they were in those days. We would be driving forever.

We'd be driving through the Appalachians, driving down the mountains and they'd be icy, icy roads. The driver would have to go very, very slow. We had two drivers and we'd be driving at night. We'd always drive through the night and get to the hotel in the morning. Check in, rest up, shower, go to the venue, come back, check out and then drive again to the next one. It was a grueling schedule. I remember we were working a place called the Carter Barron in Washington DC.

It was a big venue and the accoustics were really bad. Sound was bouncing all over the place during the soundcheck and I thought, "Wow, this is going to be really difficult for me." I'm the only talking act and it was a Saturday night with the potential for a rowdy audience. So I wondered how I was going to get through it. When we got there... we all felt this... there was something about the place... it was not a good feeling.

So, the show started and the leader of the band for the Motortown Revue was Choker Campbell. He was onstage, this large stage. When the show started we all still had this feeling. "There's something strange here." The Contours opened. If the Contours were on a given tour they always opened. Martha and the Vandellas were on second.

Martha is singing and then all of a sudden way up in the balcony - four shots went off. And as soon as the four shots went off we knew they were shots. Choker Campbell took one look at the band and stopped them. Didn't look at the audience. He grabbed all his sheet music, the band grabbed theirs and walked off the stage - as did Martha and everyone else. That was it. Show over. When something like that happens - you can't follow that.

Kliph Nesteroff: Even though this was part of the whole Motown scene - were the venues you were playing considered the Chitlin' Circuit... or what, at least, had been the Chitlin' Circuit?

Willie Tyler: Well, yeah, some of the theaters were considered that, but the Chitlin Circuit was mostly clubs. Black nightclubs. A lot of Black entertainers couldn't work white clubs and these were the places that Black acts could perform and Black crowds would come. BB King called those places Buckets of Blood because there was always someone fighting in there. They were full of cigarette smoke and they had no ventilation.

I always noticed when I worked places like that... especially in the days when Lester had a big Afro... every time I went to take him out of his suitcase, boy, you could smell that cigarette smoke in his hair. We'd play all those clubs and that cigarette smoke would linger. Me, of course, I can take a shower and everything, but you can't give Lester a shower (laughs). But yes, it was the Chitlin' Circuit.

Kliph Nesteroff: Were there any other comedians signed to Motown?

Willie Tyler: There was a guy named Bill Murry - not the actor from films, but a guy named Bill Murry who grew up in Detroit. He had an alias. He called himself Wine Head Willie. That was his moniker on the Chitlin' Circuit. When he got with Motown and started traveling with the group he changed his billing to Bill Murry. As a matter of fact on the Stevie Wonder Fingertips album where there's Part One and Part Two...

Kliph Nesteroff: Yeah...

Willie Tyler: At the end of part one you hear a guy go, "How about it? Let's hear it for him! Little Stevie Wonder! Take a bow, Stevie."

Kliph Nesteroff: Right...

Willie Tyler: That's Bill Murry.

Kliph Nesteroff: Wow, that's interesting. I didn't know he was a comedian. Bill Murry never put out a record, did he?

Willie Tyler: No, I don't think Bill ever put out any comedy albums, but when Motown moved out to Los Angeles he moved with them and did a bit of movie stuff. I'd go see a movie and there he'd be in the background.

Kliph Nesteroff: How was your Motown comedy record done?

Willie Tyler: The Fox Theater in Detroit that I mentioned, it was done live there. When I signed with Motown, in the contract it said they'd put out a Willie Tyler and Lester comedy record in one year. So while I was working in Detroit during Christmastime, they did it then. In fact they recorded all the acts at the Fox Theater during that engagement. 

They recorded our shows there and made the Hello, Dummy album from it - and you can tell because of all the people yelling in the audience on the record. It was almost like the Apollo, but that was a fun thing to do, to have my own album out on the Tamla record label... 

Kliph Nesteroff: I don't think too many people know about that record. It was recorded during the height of Motown's popularity, but it got lost in the mix.

Willie Tyler: Yes, it was a situation where they were abiding by the contract. But on that album we sing a song called Fever. In the act we'd do songs too, but if Lester and I did a song it was just something short. One time at the Fox, Berry Gordy was standing by the elevator and all the writers were there. He was talking to them and he looked over at me and looked back at them. 

He said, "When are you guys gonna write something for Willie?" But, I mean, these guys were thinking, "Why in the world would we write a song for Willie Tyler when we have the Temptations and the Supremes?" They had priorities. They told Berry, "Yeah, we'll think about that." (laughs) Of course they never wrote anything song-wise for us, but it was still just phenomenal to be a part of all of this. 

The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson with guest host Bill Cosby (1979)

The Today Show featuring Dave Garroway, Jack Lescoulie, Frank Blair and Tom Brokaw (1977)

The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson with guest host Freddie Prinze (1977)

The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson with guest Rodney Dangerfield (1977)

The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson with guest George Carlin (1974)

The Today Show with Tom Snyder and guests Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn (1973)

The Efrom Allen Show with guest Steve Allen (1975)

An Interview with Will Jordan - Part Twelve

Kliph Nesteroff: We've been talking about how all performers are influenced by someone else. There's a historical precedent for everything. So, there must be some kind of a historical precedent for Will Jordan. You say Larry Storch was one of your influences?

Will Jordan: Well, I don't think I was anything like him, but he inspired me. There wasn't really anybody. I'm really my impressions. Nobody ever sees much of me. I can't really say that anybody influenced me because I'm not really me. I don't really have a style to speak of.

I guess you could hear me tell a joke and I might remind you of someone, but I'm not really aware. I was certainly influenced and, I mean, impressed by Berle. I fell in love with a girl at the Playboy Mansion. A hatcheck girl who was the most gorgeous thing I had ever seen in my life. She dumped me and I really got suicidal. I met Bob Hope and he was very sympathetic. I said, "I'm going to kill myself." Hope said, "There will be another girl along in a minute. Don't worry about it."

Then I told Jack Benny. Jack Benny said, "To kill yourself and ruin that great talent of yours?" Then I told Berle. Look at the difference in the reaction. I said to Berle, "I'm going to kill myself." Berle said, "Sit down. Tell me about it." See the difference in people? Jane Kean introduced me to Basil Rathbone. He was doing something in the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York. Jane said to him, "You've seen Will on the Sullivan show haven't you?" And Rathbone said, "Many times."

See the difference? See how gracious that was? Some people just have a built in need to be nice. There's no question about it. Here's Tony Martin and Milton Berle wanting to hear how I lost a girl (laughs). These two guys who probably fucked more beautiful girls than you can imagine! Yet they were sympathetic that I was striking out. I thought that was amazing. Not that Jack Benny wasn't nice, he was very nice.

And Hope was trying to get me on the Como show. Can you believe it that Bob Hope couldn't get me on the Como show? Como thought I was a janitor or something. Hope said, "No, don't use Jack Carter. Will Jordan is an original!" Here's Bob Hope talking to Como! Como said, "Why would you knock Jack Carter?" Of course, none of these people would knock Jack Carter just to please me, but they certainly agreed that the [original Ed Sullivan] bit was mine.

No one denied that and no one ever thought anything other than that. My luck. This is bad luck. Bob Hope can't get me the Como show. Now the Como show at that time - you have to understand that some shows were popular and then later on they were nothing. The Steve Allen Show, which was done later in syndication, was nothing as far as building a career. They meant nothing. Jerry Lester and those shows had no meaning at all. Merv Griffin was good, but the shows that would help you you couldn't understand [why]. The show that was helping Totie Fields was Mike Douglas, which wasn't even a network show. 

Rodney [Dangerfield] confirmed this. He said, "I got more reaction from [being on] Mike Douglas than I did Ed Sullivan." Makes no sense! Of course they all agreed on Johnny Carson. But for the actual amount of people [made famous] you would have to go with Jack Paar. These people didn't become big stars, but he made a lot of semi-stars. You know? He definitely loved people from Ohio. He is definitely responsible for Hugh Downs. He is definitely responsible for Jonathan Winters and Charlie Weaver. 

Now on radio - the big one - no one ever mentions. This guy introduced almost every major star. One man - Rudy Vallee. Rudy Vallee introduced Eddie Cantor, certainly Edgar Bergen and many, many others. They all got their start on the Rudy Vallee show and he wasn't that old. Vallee was the same age as Bing.

Kliph Nesteroff: They blame Vallee's huge ego for killing his career...

Will Jordan: He lost his voice. And another thing was the style. Bing changed the style. Up until then the tenors were more popular. Look at the classic operas. The tenor is the hero, not the baritone. Bing made the baritone big. Baritones became "in" with Bing. Rudy Vallee was out. Dick Powell was more like Rudy Vallee, although I think he was much more talented. But I think Dick Powell was doing Rudy Vallee. 

It was the same exact look, same exact everything, but Dick Powell was a great emcee. Rudy Vallee had to be a more intellectual emcee. Rudy Vallee's show came from New York and he had stars from Broadway. In Hollywood, with the Hollywood stars, you had a different feeling. In New York you had to be a little brighter, a little more educated and a little more interested in the theater.

How many of these people ever graduated college? Very few. Bing and Rudy were two of the very few that went to college. None of the Rat Pack ever finished high school. Maybe that's not important, but it does have some affect.

Kliph Nesteroff: I would like to ask you about a notorious comedian. Lord Buckley.

Will Jordan: His daughter showed up in Vegas once, sitting at a table next to Lenny Bruce's daughter. I told the press agent to take a picture. "The daughter of Lord Buckley and the daughter of Lenny Bruce!" He didn't get the message and it was a missed opportunity. Buckley was interesting and I met him and he was like two different people. He was the stiff character imitating British, "Muff, muff! That's the stuff! I can't get enough!"

And then the next minute he's on the Sullivan show doing a hokey act, putting different hats on people, getting behind them, pinching their throat to move their mouth, doing ventriloquism. Very funny, but hardly as classy as his albums where he did The Naz and everything else. What a range in different talents. He played the piano too. Very stiff and formal. Very British, but of course he wasn't English. He would dub you a Duke or a Sir or a... He was wonderful. I think he really should have gone further than he did.

When I bought his albums recently I was disappointed. I didn't find The Naz as funny as I had originally. That could just be me. I remember when we were at GAC, the agency that handled the singers, he was there and he would entertain us when we were sitting around. He'd do the dirty songs, "Nothing could be finer than to be in your vaginer." He was really good in every area and he managed to maintain some kind of legendary status, but I'm really not that familiar with him. I'm sure you could find people that could tell you more about him than I.

Kliph Nesteroff: I know Larry Storch was close with him.

Will Jordan: Larry just doesn't talk at all now. He's just too quiet. I don't know what it is. He's coming on like he's broke. Says he doesn't have a VCR or anything. He must have money. The implication is that he's broke, but I don't think he could be broke unless he gambled. I never heard that he was a gambler. He was known as a wino, but he certainly wasn't known as an alcoholic. Of course, he was always quiet and he always had these wonderful ideas and everything.

I talked to him recently. They did a tribute to him at his eighty-eighth birthday. Jerry Stiller was there and we all got up. I got up and got serious and talked about how he influenced my life. There were people that saw his act at the Paramount and they said you wanted to get up onstage and pull the next impersonation out of him. Then when I saw him playing a gay driving instructor on a Columbo I said, "God, can that be same guy!?" It didn't look like anything I had ever seen him do before.

He did a character which he got from Billy DeWolfe. Almost the same material. In Billy DeWolfe's act he would put on a little hat and he was extremely effeminate and had a little moustache and everything. Very, very funny man, Billy DeWolfe. Larry Storch was also one of the very few people that could imitate a woman's voice. That sounds easy, but you really can't unless it's a falsetto or a little girl. Very, very few could do that. Offhand I can't think of anyone who could do a convincing woman. Larry could do that.

I saw both of them at the Paramount. The style of mimics back then was... you would do your impression then you would do a comedy bit ala Frank Fontaine. Lenny Bruce did a dumb guy that was a swimmer. "Duh, my body was covered in lanolin and I kept slipping off the wattah!" 

It was the corresponding character to Frank Fontaine. Mickey Shaughnessy would do impressions and then at the end he would do an Irish rebellion bit. I guess they felt that the audience wanted balance. To me it was no problem. For me, to not be funny is very easy (laughs).

It's being funny that I have trouble with! For me to go into a dramatic scene was easy, but nevertheless I was not that good as an actor. I could do Brando seriously or I could do [John] Garfield seriously. I could do that. The one year I spent at the Academy [of Dramatic Arts] was not enough. I needed to go out and do summer stock. I did summer stock and maybe I got better, but my heart wasn't in it. I wanted to stand up in front of a room and talk. I didn't want to read other people's lines. I wanted to talk.

Kliph Nesteroff: Storch was... maybe I'm wrong... but he was a big name performing at the Paramount in the late forties...

Will Jordan: He wasn't a big name, no. He was a supporting act. The big name was Perry Como. The comedian was never the star.

Kliph Nesteroff: One of the other guys that was part of that scene, part of that world, frequently on the bill at the Broadway presentation houses, is Carl Ballantine.

Will Jordan: Oh, wasn't he wonderful. Wasn't he great. But he started off, as so many of these guys do, doing something else. He really was a magician and he got to being funny. He was very interesting and very quiet in real life. You know, I really thought I would have a rapport with him, yet in real life he just didn't talk.

Maybe that's because... I don't know... I somehow affect people differently. I don't know. Some people love me, some people hate me, and some people just don't talk to me at all. I certainly wanted to talk to him. I certainly thought he was great. His acting was good. He was in that movie with George Burns and his act was wonderful.

Kliph Nesteroff: When you did Broadway Danny Rose you were also there with Morty Gunty, Corbett Monica...

Will Jordan: All of their scenes were cut out and it really was painful for poor Corbett Monica. He had this big scene cut out and he [bought an advertisement on] the back page of Variety to announce himself - and he's not even in the movie. I said to him, "Corbett, you wait for the movie to come out!" It's not just Woody, every [director] cuts. I was completely cut out of Mr. Saturday Night. I got a lot of money and I'm not even in it. Billy Crystal cut me out completely and in Broadway Danny Rose Woody cut me out completely.

I was the one who makes the other comedians laugh. The bit I did on [the comedy record] Ill Will - how Ralph Richardson's picture got in Lindy's window - was a natural and I did it for the other comedians and Woody cut it out. I was mad. I shouldn't have been. When he wanted me to be in Radio Days I did something I thought I would never have the balls to do. I told the casting woman, Juliette Taylor, "I don't know how often you hear this, but I'm turning down your movie. I'm turning down Woody Allen."

And yet Woody and I were friends. I got up at one of his parties years ago, when I was still with Jack Rollins. I had him screaming. I did all my real weird, sick bits like the Hitler story. That was before Lenny Bruce stole it. Woody thought I was great. And I thought he was great. He is just amazingly prolific, y'know. Part of the reason is the incentive. That's part of my cop out - that I didn't have the incentive. I should have kept creating. All these other guys like Mel Brooks are older than me - and he's still creating. I think I should have too, but I didn't have the incentive.

Kliph Nesteroff: How long were you with Jack Rollins?

Will Jordan: Not too long. Just a couple of years. When Belafonte left him he just became a vegetable. Tom Poston was my friend and he said, "Don't leave him. He'll get over this." I didn't believe that. I believed MCA was holding me back and Jack Rollins just wasn't all there. The minute I left him he wound up signing every major comedian in the country. You talk about mistakes. That I will take full blame for. Belafonte leaves him and he gets Woody Allen, Tom Poston, Robert Klein, David Letterman, on and on and on.

He joined with the agent at MCA who got me Jack in the first place, Charlie Joffe. He died recently, very sad, Charlie was younger than all of us. He was with MCA and Rollins didn't want to sign me because he had his hands full with Belafonte. He came to see my opening night at La Vien Rose, which was great. That was the night Eddie Fisher said, "Would you like to open for me at the Coconaut Grove?" I was still a little mad at Eddie and I hesitated. Rollins, who was not yet my manager, took charge. He said, "He would love to, Eddie." I froze!

Eddie didn't know what to believe. His best friend [Joey Forman] was who he should have used, but I made that impression on him. These people had never seen the Ed Sullivan bit. The other impressions went over very well. You have to remember these opening nights were full of show people. When we did the tribute at the Improv and the audience was full of comedians, I was a big hit, but then the normal people came in and saw me and - uh - not so good.

Kliph Nesteroff: (laughs) Right.

Will Jordan: They didn't know who those people [I impersonated] were. My original baseball bit, Charles Laughton was the umpire and then I changed it to Hitchcock. Couldn't believe that this great actor, Charles Laughton, people didn't remember. I took out John Garfield and put in Groucho. I had to modernize it. Jimmy Stewart was popular all through the years so I could leave Jimmy Stewart in. Groucho was the pitcher and I could leave him in because he remained popular for over fifty years.

Kliph Nesteroff: I wish I could hear the Bob and Ray impression that you do... or did.

Will Jordan: Chuck McCann does it better than me. [In Bob Elliott voice], "Well, there's nothing like a tall frosty glass of Piel's Beer..."

Kliph Nesteroff: (laughs)

Will Jordan: I'm warming up. Sometimes I just can't do it.

Kliph Nesteroff: You got it, I think.

Will Jordan: Sometimes I just can't do it.

Kliph Nesteroff: Yeah, well, when is the last time someone asked you to do an impression of Bob Elliott...

Will Jordan: Yeah, but usually I'm pretty flexible. Many impressions improved. David Frye was a better mimic than me. I showed him how to do Henry Fonda and he wound up doing it much better. He got the fragment from me and the placement of the throat.

Kliph Nesteroff: You had a Garry Moore impression in your repertoire.

Will Jordan: That I had no competition with. Nobody wanted to do it! "Hello friends, this is Garry Moore." There was no competition. Nobody cared!

Kliph Nesteroff: (laughs)

Will Jordan: But he was just one of the army of hundreds of famous people that were not impersonated. Why was there no impression of Paul Newman? He was as big as anyone. Why was there no impression of Robert Redford? I was the only one that did Mitchum, but I just did his face. David Frye and this guy in Australia did the voice, but I couldn't get that deep. Jack Benny who I really looked like more than anyone else - I couldn't get that voice. Here's Rich Little who looks nothing like him. Rich Little and another guy you wouldn't know - Bob McFadden.

Kliph Nesteroff: Of course, yeah.

Will Jordan: You do know Bob McFadden.

Kliph Nesteroff: I do, yeah.

Will Jordan: Bob McFadden did Jack Benny equally as well. I couldn't. I couldn't do the speech. A radio convention hired me to do Benny and I said, "You're mistaking the photo for the voice. I can look like him more than anything else." When I met his daughter she asked if I knew him and I said, "Are you kidding? He was great to me." She said, "You must have looked like twins."

And then I told her I used to date her father's secretary. I was there trying to get with Dorothy Owen and she said, "You knew Dorothy!?" I dated her. At one point she was still quite beautiful, Joan, the daughter. But at this point she was a grandmother. I was flattered and I liked her. She told me some interesting things I didn't know. She was adopted from a Jewish adoption agency.

I didn't know there was such a thing. It's true they weren't her biological parents, but they knew her biological parents were Jewish. I thought that was extremely interesting. Both she and her mother got nose jobs (laughs) but not because they were related! Because they both didn't like their noses!

I never met Mary [Livingston]. Everyone thought she was a no-talent and I thought Mary was very good. You compare Mary to Fred Allen's wife, who was the sweetest woman in the world, and Portland [Hoffa] had no talent at all. Mary could read a line. You listen to Mary's acting and she's great!

Kliph Nesteroff: She apparently hated doing the show. She never really did the TV program.

Will Jordan: Her readings are perfect. She got screams. She was excellent. For a non-professional she was excellent. They were all pretty good. There was Phil Harris. Phil Harris, like Pearl Bailey, was influenced by the real great Black guy, Bert Williams. The real one. That's where Pearl Bailey got it from. Another amazing guy. He had records and he made [film] shorts. Two completely separate talents. He was great on records and he was great in pantomime. Bert Williams. They said he was an unhappy guy. Eddie Cantor said he was funnier and more talented than all of them.

Kliph Nesteroff: Right.

Will Jordan: Even WC Fields, who was reluctant to give praise, said he was the greatest. He was so light he had to put on the blackface. You listen to that phrasing, "I ain't done nut-tin for no-bah-dee." That's very close to Pearl Bailey and very close to Phil Harris. That's What I Like About the South is very, very close.

Kliph Nesteroff: Bert Williams is another of those people where you hear the stories, "The greatest I ever saw on a stage." But we'll never be able to confirm it.

Will Jordan: In one book about Bert Williams they say he entered a contest. He entered a Bert Williams [look-a-like] contest and he lost. He came in third. In Chaplin's son's book he says Chaplin entered a Chaplin [look-a-like] contest and came in third. On Joe Franklin's show, when Bing Crosby was on, he said he entered a Bing Crosby contest and he came in third. I wonder why these guys always came in third. In the Bert Williams book, the Black woman who wrote it - she was angry at Bert Williams for doing that. She said he had no right to go out and pretend. [He] deserved bombing. I thought it was an extremely interesting analysis. I like that opinion. Of course, the Blacks are so highly charged that... you're not Black are you?

Kliph Nesteroff: (uncomfortable silence)

Will Jordan: Anyway, the thing is (coughs)... he must have been great. Here in New York they had a guy that was doing a tribute to Bert Williams and he was screaming. This little short guy with a bald head screaming and I'm saying, "What are you talking about?" He's screaming? Bert Williams underplayed like crazy! You listen to the records and everything is so underplayed.

Kliph Nesteroff: Well, Will, I gotta let you go... I need to go to sleep...

Will Jordan: Yeah, me too. Okay, Kliph! Thank you. You've made me feel great! You've made me make up for all the shows I didn't do in the past few years.